Paul Waldman

Paul Waldman is a weekly columnist and senior writer for The American Prospect. He also writes for the Plum Line blog at The Washington Post and The Week and is the author of Being Right is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From Conservative Success.

Recent Articles

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Trump speaks during a rally on August 2, 2018, in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. I f you're a white person who angers Donald Trump, you never know what particular insult he'll choose to lob at you. He might call you little, or crooked, or ugly, or something else, utilizing all the insight available to your average elementary school bully. But if you're black, chances are he's going to call you stupid. In his many recent campaign-style rallies, Trump's extended stream-of-consciousness rants are sure to include a section going after Representative Maxine Waters, who, like hundreds of other elected Democrats, has been highly critical of the president. When he criticizes Waters, he inevitably calls her a "low IQ person." And then there's this: Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2018 The interview in question was...

(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Trump boards Air Force One en route to Washington on July 29, 2018, after visiting Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. A bsurd hyperbole has gotten Donald Trump this far, and he's not going to give it up now. Or to put it another way, "People will just believe you. You just tell them and they believe you," as the president once told his then-lackey Billy Bush. So when the economy experienced a quarter of strong GDP growth of 4.1 percent, we knew exactly what Trump would say: This is the greatest thing that has ever happened, it's because I'm such a genius, and it will go on forever. I could go through all the absurd things he has said about his current economic record, like the idea that the number of jobs created since he was elected is so spectacular that it was "unthinkable if you go back to the campaign" (actually, jobs were created at a faster pace in Barack Obama's second term). But what may be most interesting is the way Trump and his...

AP Photo/Seth Wenig Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez greets a reporter near Rockefeller Center in New York. I magine this scenario: Republicans, after viewing dozens of polls and considering recent political history, begin publicly asking whether passing a gigantic tax cut for the wealthy and corporations was actually a terrible idea, and one they should never repeat. Some insist that it was the right thing to do, but just as many are adamant that if the party really wants to appeal to a majority of the public and win elections in the future, it can't go down this foolhardy path. You can't imagine it, can you? That kind of ideological second-guessing is something Republicans just don't do—even when the public is firmly and obviously opposed to their agenda. Democrats, on the other hand? They love them some self-flagellation. And this is the great irony of contemporary party politics. We have one party whose agenda is largely rejected by the public, but which...

(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte speak during a news conference about immigration legislation at the Capitol on June 29, 2017. A fter George W. Bush left office with the economy in crisis and the Iraq War widely acknowledged as the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history, Republicans began a desperate rehabilitation campaign—not to restore his image, but to salvage their own. Bush? We never liked him anyway, they said, the evidence of eight years of worshipful support notwithstanding. Searching for some grounds on which to make this absurd claim, they said he wasn't a real conservative because he didn't cut spending. So their hands were clean. When Donald Trump leaves office, either in 2021 or 2025, Republicans will go through the same charade. The "Never Trump" crew, they'll insist at that point, didn't consist of a few hardy intellectuals and writers, but instead included nearly every Republican...

(AP Photo/Kevin Hagen) Demonstrators protest against the Trump administration's immigration policies on June 30, 2018, in New York. A mong the many privileges certain Americans enjoy—along with the presumption of competence and driving without being pulled over unless they actually commit a moving violation—is the right to cry out in rage at the sight of political and societal change, to demand that things revert back to how they were before, and to find this demand greeted with understanding and consideration. Indeed, the angry demand for a reversion to the prior order—what we can call the politics of backlash—has been the basis of Republican electoral success for decades. They have held up one social or political development after another and told have voters, "These changes are the symptom and cause of what you have lost." Your standard of living, your hopes for the future, the vibrancy of your community, your security, your place in a society ordered as you would like it, or just...